| Abstrakt: |
AbstractHarriet Martineau's abolitionist project in her 1841 novel, The Hour and the Man, problematizes contemporary understandings of race both on a thematic and a structural level. Martineau first revises portraits of Toussaint L'Ouverture in circulation at the time of the novel's publication by constructing him as a Westernized cross between Rousseau's Noble Savage and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko. At the same time, the text dissects the dynamics of interpretation itselfby staging its elements and dramatizing its process. This procedure reflects backon ideas of race by suggesting the limitations of this category, which functions in Western culture as one of the most significant moments of social interpretation |
